Larry McMurtry once wrote that “only a rank degenerate” would drive all the way across Texas on Highway 281, without stopping and getting a chicken fried steak. It was in one of his essays on Texas that I read a long time ago, but it stuck with me vividly. It’s one of my favorite things he’s written Part of the reason for that is because it’s got the McMurtry feel to it: it’s got a sharpness, a little bit of a bite. And most of all, like much of what he wrote, it has a strong sense of place.
But there’s also something more substantive behind it. I found myself suddenly thinking of this, in, of all places, a pub in Dundee, Scotland while I was putting malt vinegar on my french fries. Oh, sorry, on my chips. It’s culture that creates a sense of place, whether it’s at a British pub or at a diner in Wichita Falls.
So what does this have to do with the typical things we talk about here together? Obviously when we talk about things like food we’re not talking about the arts. Well, here’s the answer: Both have to do with culture, an idea which art exists as a part of. Culture is the way to make sense of a place; it’s what gives a location whatever identity it may have.
Places without culture are those places that you can’t distinguish from other places. Dallas from years back comes to mind. For decades, Dallas was a town that prided itself on getting down to business. Its money and energies went into that exclusively. After the Kennedy assassination it found it had nothing to craft an identity on that could counterbalance that tragedy. That’s why the city so embraced the Cowboys with such a sense of relief when they started winning in the 1970s, and the “America’s Team” label started to stick. It’s also why it went so bananas over the TV show Dallas. Those things became the city’s identity. It has world class museums and a symphony but still struggles to define itself culturally.
But that’s what culture, broadly defined, does: It provides for us a vivid sense of place.
Music and literature and poetry and painting are all part of what goes into to making culture. When you think about Austin you think about music. When you think about Dublin you think of poetry. When you think about Paris you think about literature.
The idea that culture can create a sense of belonging and participation in our increasingly fragmented and isolated world is certainly something worth exploring further. And something writers like Larry McMurtry knew a long time ago. Let’s talk more about this.
